Tracing the idea of the Devil from the English Reformation to the scientific revolution of the late 17th century, Darren Oldridge shows how the most demonic figure of the underworld played a leading role in the religious and political conflicts of the age, and inspired great works of poetry and drama. During the turmoil of the English Civil War, fears of a secret conspiracy of Devil worshippers fuelled a witchhunt that claimed at least a hundred lives. Oldridge explains that not only was the Devil a central figure in the imaginative life of the age, he was also an ambiguous and complex one, at once the avowed enemy of God and his unwilling accomplice, a creature that provoked fascination, dread, and comedy as well.